Precision spectroscopy and laser-cooling scheme of a radium-containing molecule
Abstract
Molecules containing heavy radioactive nuclei are predicted to be extremely sensitive to violations of the fundamental symmetries of nature. The nuclear octupole deformation of certain radium isotopes massively boosts the sensitivity of radium monofuoride molecules to symmetry-violating nuclear properties. Moreover, these molecules are predicted to be laser coolable. Here we report measurements of the rovibronic structure of radium monofuoride molecules, which allow the determination of their laser cooling scheme. We demonstrate an improvement in resolution of more than two orders of magnitude compared to the state of the art. Our developments allowed measurements of minuscule amounts of hot molecules, with only a few hundred per second produced in a particular rotational state. The combined precision and sensitivity achieved in this work ofer opportunities for studies of radioactive molecules of interest in fundamental physics, chemistry and astrophysics.
Main Authors
Format
Articles
Research article
Published
2024
Series
Subjects
Publication in research information system
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
The permanent address of the publication
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:jyu-202405023252Use this for linking
Review status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1745-2473
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-023-02296-w
Language
English
Published in
Nature Physics
Citation
- Udrescu, S. M., Wilkins, S. G., Breier, A.A., Athanasakis-Kaklamanakis, M., Garcia Ruiz, R. F., Au, M., Belošević, I., Berger, R., Bissell, M. L., Binnersley, C. L., Brinson, A. J., Chrysalidis, K., Cocolios, T. E., de Groote, R. P., Dorne, A., Flanagan, K. T., Franchoo, S., Gaul, K., Geldhof, S., . . . Zülch, C. (2024). Precision spectroscopy and laser-cooling scheme of a radium-containing molecule. Nature Physics, Early online. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-023-02296-w
Copyright© 2024 Springer Nature